Going Losting IV

Saturday we headed out to go losting. We haven't done that in a while, and it was a gorgeous day. It's really starting to feel like the Wenatchee we saw when we first moved here, just over a year ago. The wind was amazingly strong, and the tumbleweed were going crazy. I just love tumbleweed. There's just something so wild west about it. They are enormous, and they tumble their way through our neighborhood all spring/summer long, and it is so much fun to watch. It makes me want to run outside barefoot, and play cowboys and indians (very un-PC, I know), and be a gunslinger, and build a fort, and rob stagecoaches. :-)

So, with that image in your head, allow me to proceed with telling you about going losting. First we headed up Badger Mountain. This would be north east of the Columbia River, for reference sake. There is a road that goes along the ridge of Badger, and we'd like to find it one of these days. I think we might have found where it starts, but it will have to wait until the ground is dry for us to venture out on it... The roads up there are in the process of melting, and are very muddy clay covered with a sheet of ice on top. So we were breaking through the ice, and mucking in the mud. Which is fun, but can also be very slippery. We didn't want to get stuck out on a skinny, muddy, windy ridge with angry winds trying to blow us over the edge. (And they were trying too!) When you go off-roading by yourself, you have to be more cautious, because the only way we're getting out of a situation would be to:

1. Hope we have cell phone service. Call our friend in Wenatchee here, who says he'd come get us if we ever needed it. Hope he can find us, and get to us without getting stuck.

or, hook up our de-stuckifying rope, and...

2. Have Frank Castle tug while I drive. But unless he's playing football in the rain, he really hates to get dirty, and would be very very very irritable, and I really really really hate that, because in difficult situations I tend to prefer dealing with it via annoying chirpy cheerfulness, so it would probably end up being more like,

3. I tug us while Frank Castle drives. HAHAHAHA! I'm just full of fun visuals today.

And, as none of these sound like fun, viable, workable, or otherwise common sense options, pretty much we just make sure we're not going to get stuck. :-)

Anyway, we found this totally cool old building...

I just loved the look of the foundation...Some cool rock formations while we were slipping and sliding along...There's just something about a broad expanse of wind-blown nothing... (did I mention it was really violently windy?)A beautiful old barn, with a windmill. It was working some overtime, I tell ya what. I need one of them.And the view of the valley, with snow clouds coming in, headed back down Badger. When we eventually get a camera capable of having multiple lenses, I desperately want a panoramic lens. It is the only thing that will ever be able to come close to doing these views justice.

Right about here, Debris took a nap...

Kiki thought Debris' open-mouthed nap was funny. It was still very bumpy, and I couldn't manage to get an in focus pic of her, but here is her smiling face anyhoo.

On about this point we headed down south west of Wenatchee, on (shocking, I know) the south west side of the Columbia River. Frank was on a scouting mission for work at this point, so I didn't get very many pics. But, we did manage to find a super fun road, that had a bunch of deeeeeeeep, laaaaaarrrrrrge, diiiiiiiirrrrrtyyyyy puddles, so Brie was awake by the time we got down there, and we had the very best sort of fun. Puddle fun.

As you can imagine, we had two very happy girls in the car with us...

You didn't think we could ever do a "going losting" post without gratuitous Rovey shot, didja? I'm quite please with how that one turned out.The landscape is completely different over on that side of the river. Should have taken more pics.

Rovey very officially needs a bath now.

And, before heading home, we found a cool river access point. It had a really steep boat ramp with seriously huge rocks on it. I'd be really interested to see someone put a boat in on that boat ramp. :-) But Frank got this pic there...


And so ends our fourth going losting post. We awoke Sunday morning to a snowy valley... Just beautiful. While there is a time for every season, winter will always be my very favorite here in Wenatchee.